It has long been standard practice for an eXile editor, upon returning from a trip back to America, to rant at length about what a rotten place it is. God knows it’s easy enough to do. Hell, even the relatively well-adjusted 18-year-old from Colorado whom I chatted with during a 5-hour layover at the Frankfurt airport bar (wearing standard-issue khakis and toting an expensive-looking fly rod, he was en route to visiting his girlfriend in Zurich, the poor sap) proceeded to unleash a laundry list of complaints about the States with almost no prompting whatsoever.

If I was so inclined, I’m sure I could produce some appropriately directed bile as well. For instance, I could bitch about the herds of fleshy women who roam the streets, their knees looking like mismatched pairs of slightly shriveled volleyballs. Or if I really wanted a meaty, yet conveniently self-contained subject, I could go into the endless succession of incongruous couples I saw while sitting down at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco one day. Talk about a testament to human ugliness. The average U.S. tourist is unpleasant enough to behold on an individual basis, but the manner in which this species chooses to partner itself is nothing short of harrowing. I must have seen a hundred different romantic pairings walk by, and not one of them could have been described as a “cute couple” even under the most charitable of circumstances. Each of these prime examples of aesthetic incompatibility was truly greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, the only way to make any kind of qualitative sense out of the display was to divide up the couples mentally by breed (heterosexual, gay male, lesbian, etc.) and then select an overall “Best in Show” champion from among the winners in each division. Although, they were of course all “winners” in their own right.

But really, why go on beating a long-dead horse? Besides, if Russians can manage to maintain a delusional optimism about their own hopeless fate, then surely I ought to be able to come up with a shortlist of things that are good—or at least don’t actively suck—about America, right? Well, probably not, actually, but I’ll give it the old college try nonetheless. I’m going to shoot for an even 10 items, but I’ll be happy if I manage even half that figure.

1. Mission District burritos in San Francisco.

   This is one jewel that not even the dot-com boom and the resultant gentrification of Mission Dolores has managed to dull. There are some who point to the development of processed grains as the downfall of mankind, but this invention makes it all worthwhile. Besides, modern society has yet to uncover a better excuse for the consumption of lard. Even now that the California energy crisis is pushing the average unit price up over $6, there is still no finer fast food available anywhere on the planet.

2. California smokers who flout the ban on smoking in bars.

   In a nation ruled by unbearably self-righteous puritans, Californians are almost certainly the worst of the breed. Thus, it is heartening to see that the state’s (the same state that recently awarded $3 billion in damages to a 50-year smoker who claimed that the cigarette companies had tricked him into believing that smoking is “cool”) beleaguered smokers are putting up a fight against the fascist (for once this modifier is not quite an exaggeration; note that Nazi Germany passed a similar law in the 1930s) law that prohibits cigarette smoking in bars. Although I am sympathetic to the bar employees in whose interests the law was passed, I also think that a line needs to be drawn somewhere. It’s only one step from a smoke-free bar scene to Prohibition. Oddly enough, the speakeasy-like atmosphere of furtive smoking that has developed in those California bars choosing not to actively enforce the law has created a sense of community (at least among smokers) the likes of which is rarely seen in America these days. And this is something even the most militant antismoker can applaud.

3. The independent music scene.

   It may be widely known by the embarrassing name of “indie rock,” but the phenomenon is anything but. As mainstream music has become ever more homogenous (in fact, most of what is played on the radio and MTV has long since stopped being music at all, in the strict sense of the term), the vast reductions in recording costs engendered by advances in digital technology have enabled a veritable explosion of outstanding , innovative music from non-major label sources. There are now at least 10 times as many well-stocked independent record stores as there were just five years ago. Some day the trend might even find its way into the ‘burbs.

4. Football.

   Some day, the American empire will come to an end. The struggling euro might even overtake the dollar. But American football will always be a far superior sport to soccer. In fact, the rest of the world could probably hasten this inevitable turn of events if only they had the sense to give up on their sissified, scoring-impaired version of “football” and start playing the real thing.

Actually, that just about does it. I guess hoping to come up with just five things was overly optimistic. I wish I was joking, but frankly even that fourth item was a bit of a stretch, conceptually speaking.

This whole pointless exercise reminds of the most common misconception about suicide. It seems that many well-adjusted automatons are under the impression that depressed people actually want to kill themselves. In fact, suicide is only a viable option to the extent that it seems preferable to the other available alternatives.

In other words, I don’t necessarily want to be living here in Russia—it just seems preferable to enduring some slow, miserable death in America.